


A Midstation Nine's Dream

by writerofprose



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: The Next Generation
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:53:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26688469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerofprose/pseuds/writerofprose
Summary: It all starts when Q takes over the station. He wants to throw a wedding. His wedding.Loosely based on A Midsummer Night's Dream. As in the play, there will be 3 weddings.(A re-imagining of the episode "Q-Less.")
Relationships: Jean-Luc Picard & Q, Jean-Luc Picard/Q, Jean-Luc Picard/Q/Vash, Q & Vash (Star Trek), Q/Vash (Star Trek)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23





	1. A Botched Takeover

The reader will forgive me if there is no other record of the tale I am about to tell. No one on the station remembers it, the computer won't respond to queries about it, and Federation leaders are resolutely silent — but it did happen, and the Alpha quadrant, the Beta quadrant, and even parts of the Gamma quadrant were aware of it happening, and were powerless to do anything about it. I remember it as a dream.

I love dreams.

It all started when Q came to the station. The timing of this was perhaps a few weeks after Benjamin Sisko had been assigned here. Q appeared on the promenade with a white flash, looking down at the swirl of people below him. Those who saw him swore afterwards there was a dark look in his eyes, and he muttered to himself most uncharacteristically as he leaned on the railing. 

He didn't stay for long, no more than a few minutes. Sisko requested reports of any mischief on the station during that time. Quark reported that ten bars of gold-pressed latinum were missing from his coffers, but Sisko didn't fall for that, and as far as everyone else was concerned nothing had happened.

But the peace was short-lived. I, your humble author, was on duty in Ops when Q appeared again. 

"Don't mind me," he said. "Pretend I’m not even here.”

I startled, I must confess. He seemed not to notice or care that I did. His large eyes scanned the room, flitting across my other colleagues who had not yet noticed him. "What a filthy little watering hole this is. Tell me, if you were to train someone to run the place, how many hours would it take?"

"I'm sorry?" I said, shocked.

"How many hours?"

I wasn't sure how to quantify that. First, dozens of people ran the station, not simply myself. Second, he had not specified what level of efficiency he meant; would he want to service every ship that wished to dock here, or only the essentials? Or only enough to service the station’s population? Third, and most importantly, I doubted it was a serious question.

"You’re Q," I said. He looked at me quietly, waiting for me to explain. "Perhaps you'd like to speak to Commander Sisko. This might be above my pay grade.”

His eyes melted with a smile — a smile that didn't touch his lips. "How do you know I haven't?"

I stood and peered into the commander’s office. From this vantage point I couldn't see it, and we would only discover it later: Sisko had been transformed into a bucket of goo. His baseball was floating on top of him. I squinted, only making out the top of his desk. It was foreboding enough that I couldn’t see him.

"He's the worst kind of person, isn’t he?" Q said. "No patience for anything. I'm surprised they assigned him to such a finicky piece of flotsam. But I'm here now. Here to solve all the thousands of problems you didn’t know you had. The only doubt in my mind is the correct approach. What do you think? How do I run this place? Your way, or mine?"

All my training kept me cool under pressure. I smiled at him. "I don't believe you need to debase yourself with running Deep Space Nine."

"Unfortunately, that's exactly what I need to debase myself with. Well said."

At that moment, Q stepped out from the cover of my workstation and raised the attention of everyone else in Ops. He asked them what he had asked me – how many hours would it take to learn the ropes? – and anyone who showed him open hostility, he turned into goo like he had the commander. Major Kira, goo. I tried my best to discreetly shake my head to warn off the others.

“I have no interest in permanently harming anyone,” Q said, with a loud sigh, “this is a matter of convenience. Make yourself inconvenient, and I’ll unmake you.”

“How do you expect us to work for you when you’re killing us where we stand?” Chief O’Brien said.

“No one is being killed.” Q sighed again and rubbed his temples. "It's an experiment. Temporary. You don't have to enjoy it. In fact, I'll enjoy it more if you don't. But I _do_ need to be convincing as the person running this place, and I _will_ require help. What's the rank here, commander? Ugh, I've been demoted."

He slumped into the commander’s office, his hands in his pockets.

The Ops crew and I conferred quickly and decided that, short of alerting Starfleet, there wasn’t anything we could do about Q’s presence here. O’Brien sent out the subspace communication to Starfleet. As he pressed the button and said, “Done,” I felt a breath on my ear and startled again.

Q watched me startle, unfazed, unmoving. “Or I could skip the training, run the station my way. What do you think?”

I folded my arms, breathing slowly through my nose, closing my eyes. It was important to remain calm. “What exactly is your way, may I ask?”

"I'm not sure. I'd have to do it first. Whenever I want something to be done, I _will_ it, and it happens. If I want to extinguish a star, it happens. What you call the laws of physics, they bend over backwards to please me. I'm certain I could run the station by simply wanting it to be run. But I'm not sure what it would look like.” His face contorted with amusement. “It might turn you all to goo.”

"That does seem risky," I said.

"Exactly. In this case, the moving pieces seem important."

"Yes, our lives."

“So I probably should be trained to do it your way.”

“Probably.”

You may think me glib, reader, considering what was at stake on the station. You may even think Q had somehow turned my will to his own;"this person was not operating of their own free will," you may say to each other (assuming you even believe this account at all).

But I have always been gifted with perspective. I had also heard of Q and his kind from the Enterprise's accounts. I knew Q to be more powerful than anything the Federation had encountered, that his vengeances on Sisko and the Major were indeed reversible, and that nothing I could possibly do would make a dent towards stopping him. It seemed prudent, then, to let him have his way. 

There could also be no harm, I thought, even in enjoying myself while he did it. It was not many in the galaxy who could boast of a tete-a-tete with Q. 

And perhaps, if I was calm and wise and Q-like myself, with a good taste for mischief and a nose for fun — perhaps I could avert a much larger disaster in the process.

The next week, Q trained for Sisko's position. The station suffered beneath his rule. His orders, once he learned how to transmit them, were confused, vague, or just bad. Many more people were transformed into buckets of goo, which Dr. Bashir termed a “gelatinous DNA suspension.” Eventually Q had to appoint someone to watch over the gelatinous DNA suspensions; there were too many to leave around the corridors. Someone’s dog had stepped in one and tracked it into the school.

Q appointed Odo for that duty. Odo, unafraid of the obvious consequences, railed against Q to his face. Perhaps because he so often was a gelatinous suspension himself, he could really let Q have it. “You think I’m afraid of you just because they are? I know a tyrant when I see one. This station has survived a long line of tyrants, if you think you’re so special…” and so on.

Q listened dejectedly, chewing on his bottom lip until Odo was done. Then he sighed in a defeated manner, and snapped his fingers.

A slow smile spread over Odo's face. He bowed his head, left the office with a spring in his step, and happily obeyed Q’s every order thereafter. To this day, I haven’t seen someone quite as eager to do a job.

"I wasn't supposed to do that," Q confessed to me, slumping in Sisko’s old chair, "but I'm not supposed to do any of this! Reading reports, issuing orders. It's beneath me. You see what happens when I simply _will_? And he obeys, and it's done. I felt like myself again."

"But you aren't supposed to do that,” I repeated back to him. My tone was empathic. I wasn’t saying it because I agreed: I wanted him to tell me why. He looked at me, and I could see he knew exactly what I was doing. He might have even respected me for trying, but he didn’t answer.

So the mystery continued. Why was Q here? Was it something the Q Continuum had ordered him to do? Wasn’t the Q Continuum against him meddling with other species? Q had said something to the effect once, at least according to the records. None of us had any idea if it was true.

I pondered this question several nights in a row. What did Q want with the station? Rumors came in and out with the ships, not that it mattered. The rest of the galaxy was as much in the dark as we were. Starfleet was aware of Q’s presence, and so was the Bajoran Council of Ministers, but what could they do to stop him? And in the meantime, he would not allow any of the crew to leave. We were imprisoned here. Imprisoned living the relatively normal, quiet lives we had signed up for.

After a week, it was obvious the requirements of the position were getting to him. Those that were afraid of him found their fear beginning to wear off; some of them even dared to be sarcastic on occasion. And instead of putting them in their place with a glare or an unnaturally sharp verbal barb, he simply registered their complaint and dismissed them. It was as if he agreed with Ensign Ramirez’s remark that he was “not exactly an expert in quantum mechanics.” Or Counselor Reeta’s opinion that he showed “great, great potential for understanding interpersonal dynamics.” (Two exceptionally brave officers by any standards.)

He also confided in me he hated his uniform.

This was when the Enterprise came out of warp up outside the station, requesting to dock.

Q took the hail in Ops. With new energy, he bounded down the steps and clapped his hands together. “All right, team player Q here. You’re about to see why your space station daddy gets paid the big latinum.”

We among the senior staff glanced knowingly at each other. Q had become more nonsensical as his confidence dwindled; he was overcompensating, ginning up his own hype. We hoped it was a sign he would soon leave Deep Space Nine for good.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard appeared on-screen.

“Q, what is the meaning of this?”

Q smirked. “Captain. Just doing our job here, all of us doing our jobs. Nothing to see. Go home.”

Picard paused to register this. “If you have hurt any of the officers or the civilians…”

“If it’s not your own crew, you’re fussing over someone else’s. Mine. But perhaps you didn’t hear me, Jean-Luc. Leave.”

Picard stepped closer to the viewscreen, his face becoming large. “I’m not going to do that, Q.”

Q held up his hands, showing the fronts and backs of them. “Observe,” he said to us. He snapped both sets of fingers.

The Enterprise vanished.

Q grinned. In a swift motion, he sat on the center console, then laid back on it. He slid his hands behind his head, his expression softening to something wistful.

“I miss me,” he said to no one in particular.

I stood over him, hands clasped behind my back. “May I ask where the ship is, sir?”

“You may. In orbit around Tagus III.”

“Any particular significance?”

He shifted to a more comfortable position and in the process hit a few buttons with his elbow. They chirped cheerily. One could only guess what havoc they might have caused across the station.

“He’ll know what I mean,” Q said.

“Very good, sir.”

The next day passed much the same as the others. Off-duty officers went to the bars or the Holosuites or their quarters, while on-duty officers weathered the chaos of Q’s mismanagement.

Myself, I was not sure how Q could keep this path when it was obvious he was miserable. He couldn’t run the station as a human, and as himself – well, something prohibited him from trying that too. I had hoped Picard would have talked him off his ledge. In most of the records, he had listened to Picard and no one else – no one that Starfleet was aware of. Perhaps Picard would try again with a subspace message. Perhaps there was still hope.

I took a short vacation in the Holosuite: a 36-hour, vow of silence retreat at the monasteries of Kreeus II. Morn had purchased the program; we had scheduled our time months ago. I didn’t want to cancel, and I doubted the station would miss me. Truthfully, there was only so much good I could do before Q came behind me and undid it.

Afterwards, totally refreshed, and totally unaware of the events of the previous day, I entered the turbolift to Ops.

I was startled to see Captain Picard waiting inside. He nodded at me politely.

“Captain Picard! What are you doing here?”

“I thought the news would have spread by now,” he answered stiffly.

“Oh, I apologize. I was in the Holosuite.”

“All day, lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir. Commander Sisko approved—”

“Do you think now is an appropriate time for a lark in the Holodeck?”

His tone was so sharp, I dared not say anything else to him. When we reached Ops, he strode to Sisko’s office. Just before disappearing inside, he turned and barked to the room: “If I am to run this station at its customary efficiency, I will need my senior staff _present_ _and_ _informed_.”

When he was gone, I sidled up to Chief O’Brien. “Is he…? Like Odo?”

“No,” O’Brien said. “He’s all there, all right. A bit fed up with Q. He’s in fine company there.”

Through a collection of interviews, I have determined what took place during the day I was absent. If you are willing, dear reader, I will recount it to you.

First of all, Picard. He was on the Enterprise, orbiting Tagus III when Q snatched him. Picard appeared in Ops with exactly no warning and no fanfare. Q was not there to greet him, only a team of officers just as clueless as he was. Picard was forced to puzzle out Q’s reasoning on his own. The biggest clue was Picard was wearing Q’s uniform (previously Sisko’s uniform). That, along with the sore condition of station morale and Q’s absence, indicated to Picard that he was meant to handle the job.

Picard agreed to manage the station, but he fervently cited the “temporary” nature of his leadership. Everyone was relieved. A space station was different from a starship, but a calming presence could go a long way with a battered crew.

As for Q, all was not as it appeared. To the station, it looked as though our incompetent but ostensibly all-powerful leader had banished Picard one day but forced him back the next. It looked like Q was really losing it. Instead, there had been much more time between these events.

Q had experienced a week’s worth of time in our future, wherein (1) half the station formed a union and went on strike, (2) a sleepy pilot crashed a roundabout into the school, killing dozens of children, and (3) most of the storage bays were destroyed in a plasma fire. It was so disastrous Q reversed the timeline and started again with Picard.

So, there we were.

Picard had yet to speak to Q since the Enterprise hail, and he was on the lookout, understandably. However, Q seemed to make a game of avoiding him. Eventually Picard abandoned his uniform, donned civilian clothes and installed himself at Quark’s. It was a smart play. I was rooting for him. From a distance. I was a little shy after he’d made a lesson of me in Ops.

From my vantage point in the balcony, I could see a little Bajoran boy tug on Picard’s shirt. Picard turned around and noted him. The boy stood on tiptoe to whisper something to him. Picard finished the rest of his drink and followed him onto the promenade.

I followed them from the upper level. The boy weaved through the crowd until he came to a group of Bajorans gathered around Q. Q was sitting in a ceremonial chair raised against the bulkhead, his feet resting in a bowl; a little girl was pouring water over them. An old man was massaging his neck.

Picard took all of this in. He glowered at Q.

And Q watched Picard through one eye, enjoying his massage too much to bother with the second.

“Where’s Vash?” Picard demanded.


	2. Hello to Old Friends

Forgive me, reader. I was called away from the page and I left you hanging in a most suspenseful manner – and this the conversation when we first hear mention of the wedding! I will not be so careless again.

As I was saying before, Picard stormed up to Q and demanded he tell him the location of Vash.

Immediately, the Bajorans around them were on their guard. They had been soothing Q with soft, worshipful words for hours or quite possibly days, and the sound of someone speaking to Q as if he was a common pirate who had sneaked in through the docking ring was quite shocking.

“You’ll have to speak the teensiest bit softer, Jean-Luc, I don’t want this massage to go to waste.”

“Enough. What are you playing at, Q? Besides playing God, again.”

This, understandably, sent the Bajorans into a frenzy. The women stepped back with the children while the men swarmed around Picard. Someone knocked over a large votive candle in the process; it landed with a crack at Q’s feet.

Q held up a single finger. The men around Picard froze obediently. The man massaging Q began working on his shoulder, and Q stretched his neck regally.

“I explained,” he began, “to these good people that I am functionally no different than their Prophets. Or did they explain that to me? Whatever it was, we reached an agreement. There were no lies, no deceptions. It’s all very above board.”

“That doesn’t explain what you’re doing here. You could be worshipped anywhere.”

“You think so? How nice. Nevertheless I’m not here for me, Picard. I’m here for her.”

“Where is she? Where is Vash?”

“Not far. She comes closer every day. She wouldn’t dare miss the wedding.”

Now Picard almost shouted. “What wedding?” The men grabbed Picard’s arms, holding him back.

Q stood to his full height, quite a bit taller for the platform beneath him. “The most important wedding ever conceived. _My_ wedding. They understand that, but I can see it in your eyes: still not a believer.” Q shook his head. “When a god deigns to marry a mortal, it’s an anomaly the universe rarely sees. Like one of those star events you love – common as dust – but you drool over them just the same. _I_ , on the other hand, am a true anomaly. And if I require a few mortals to ooh and ahh, there’s no harm done.”

Picard seemed to think about that. Then he shook his head, disgusted. “No.”

Q chuckled. “I haven’t let a soul on this station tell me no.”

The Bajoran men pulled Picard to the ground; he became lost in the crowd of them. There was the sound of blows. Then a shout sounded over the hubbub: it was Picard. “Enough!”

Q stepped towards the group, his ceremonial robe dragging behind him. The men shrunk back, revealing Picard sitting on the floor and nursing a busted lip. He spit and looked up at Q, a fire in his eyes. He looked powerful somehow – not _despite_ sitting on the floor but _because_ of it.

“Call off your cult, or we’re done here,” he said.

“Mm, more of a sect.”

“Alone, now,” Picard said.

Q thought about that. For a moment, his expression was placid, maybe a little bored. His eyes drifted around the room until they made their circle and drifted back to Picard; then they softened. He waved his right hand and the Bajorans dispersed.

The old man who had given the massage extended a towel. Q reached out and firmly squeezed his ear, as the Bajorans do. With his right hand, Q dabbed his face with the towel, and with his left hand he offered to help Picard to his feet. Picard took his hand begrudgingly.

You’ll remember, reader, that your humble author was viewing all of this from above. I was protected by the fact that the Bajorans were gathered around too. But as the crowd dispersed, I was aware how obvious I would look, eavesdropping like this. So I hung back closer to the internal wall, hidden from view. To anyone walking by, I would look like I was lost in thought. An innocent star-watcher.

This is the rest of what I heard.

“Who hit you?” Q asked.

“That is the least of my problems.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I don’t feel it.”

“Don’t be silly. Here.”

By the silence, I inferred Q reached out and healed him.

I like to imagine how this went. I imagine his thumb sliding tenderly over Picard’s lip. I imagine Picard being surprised by this contact – and surprised afterwards to find his lip completely normal, though he hadn’t felt any change. I imagine Q feeling a twinge of sadness to let his hand fall back to his side.

I’m aware I have quite the imagination. But as you will see over the course of this tale, I might not have been far off.

“What was it you wanted to tell me?” Q said, all business again.

“To ask you. My ship needs me, Q. What am I doing here?”

The sound of Q sighing. “They’ve done without you before. They’ll make do again.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“Because I need you. I know it chafes you, but I outrank Starfleet. You’re in the business of obeying orders; this is an order like any other. Besides, I tried doing the job. I’m no good at menial micromanagement. That’s your specialty.”

“No one asked you to commandeer this station, Q. You created the problem, why don’t you solve it?”

“My solution is you.”

“Why this station? Why not someplace… less fragile?”

“You think you’re the picture of honesty. I’ve answered enough of your questions to know there’s only more judgment at the end of them. _J_ _’abandonne_.”

“I’m complying with this game now, for their sake, but I won’t play much longer.”

“Oh, and would you stop playing and watch them all suffer again?”

“Some other leader will take over. Commander Sisko—”

“No. You. There will be no other.” There was a short pause followed by a lighter tone in Q’s voice, “You’re too good at your job, Jean-Luc. Managing this station, managing me. I almost pity you.”

After that was a long silence. I began to fear they had wandered down the promenade, out of earshot. I stepped towards the rail, and I saw Q several paces away from Picard. Picard looked after him. The conversation had ended.

Odo hurried out of security to incline his head to Q, who tossed him his hand towel and walked on.

“Incredible,” said a voice next to me.

I startled. It was Quark.

“A wedding for a god. This might do it. This might make me richer than the Grand Nagus. And all this time, I just had to wait for it to happen.”

“I thought I was the only one eavesdropping,” I told him.

Picard wandered into the area where Q had been seated. He was out of earshot.

“Rule of acquisition number seven, keep your ears open,” Quark said. “He’s taken to the Bajorans, hasn’t he? This Q fellow?”

“Not all the Bajorans. It must be interesting, if you worship a more,” I chose the word carefully, “ _capable_ species like that. Was this bound to happen eventually?”

“I couldn’t care less. But what a terrible display just now! Maybe someone should assure him it won’t happen again.”

“I’m sure Picard has encountered that many times before.”

“Who cares about Picard? No, Q. If there’s to be worship on this station, there should be structure.”

Quark hurried off.

I looked down. Picard was considering the paraphernalia around him. The bowl for the foot washing, the low table stacked with fruits and desserts, and the hand-embroidered blankets draped over the throne chair.

One of the votive candles had fallen. Picard picked it up, placing it back onto its holder. He stared at it for so long I knew he was thinking about something else.

It couldn’t be easy to be him. To be Jean-Luc Picard.

The next day, I asked him to dinner. It was true he had been less than kind to me in the past, but he seemed so lonely. Each day he shuffled back-and-forth between Sisko’s office and his quarters, never socialized, brought here against his will and stuck here. Of course he declined my invitation, hardly looking up from his PADD before changing the subject back to work. He was a little rude about it, but nothing anyone else would have noticed.

However boring his private life was, it was hard to argue with the results. I couldn’t have imagined a more inspiring commander for the station during its time of crisis. When Q dislocated a section of the habitat ring for his personal cathedral (“I live here too,” he said), Picard worked into his night shift to make sure the room assignments were reorganized correctly, and that there would be no other unforeseen consequences. He remained calm throughout.

“Aren’t you angry, sir?” O’Brien asked him.

Picard looked up from the center console. “My quarters were unaffected. This time.”

“Begging your pardon, I meant all of it, sir. About him bringing you here in the first place. If it was me, I’d have none of it, not that I’d ever admit it to his face.”

Picard nodded at O’Brien, thinking. When he had first arrived on the station, he had told O’Brien it was good to see an Enterprise man, and he was always gentler with O’Brien than the rest of us.

“I don’t think the anger would serve me,” Picard answered. “Even if I demanded to be returned to the Enterprise, Q would simply create some impish reason for the Enterprise to be here. No, I’ve tried resisting in the past. All it furthers is the impulse to struggle.”

They were wise words: simple to hear, easy to digest, and when Picard paused in thought, we naturally paused with him in the hopes that we would hear more.

I glanced at O’Brien, who gave me the tiniest smile – as if to say, “You see? This is why I will always respect him, and now you will too.”

Picard continued. “We have evolved so far, mastered so much. This station, floating in a vacuum, would have been beyond the dreams of our ancestors. But the truth is, as individuals we control very little. It’s together, we have power. It’s together, we can resist an entity such as Q. It’s together, we progress. That is Starfleet’s focus, and that is my focus as well, Chief.”

He went back to his office, leaving us to think about his words. There was a renewed energy in the room. I felt it too as I updated the crew database, my fingers skipping across the LCARS.

A voice from behind me spoke. “Always with his speeches. That was your first, wasn’t it?”

I didn’t startle, somehow. Was I getting used to Q already? I glanced at him: he rested an elbow on the console, staring past me at Picard’s shut door.

I kept working.

“It was nice of you to invite him to dinner. Don’t take his dislike of you personally, my dear. I see it as a compliment. He’s a brittle old man.”

“I can be a bit of a brittle old man myself,” I replied.

Q’s eyes shifted to me. He reached out a finger and traced my spots down my hairline onto my neck. I gave up working, let my hands fall into my lap, and stared back at him. If I was going to be ogled, I wouldn’t make it easy for him.

But this was Q. Of course he was unfazed by my attention. “How many times were you married?”

“Several.”

“I’ll have to ask you for advice, young lady.” Q’s finger slid from my neck to my chin, and he tipped it upwards. “Young lady. Isn’t that what Sisko called you?”

“Something like that.”

Q’s eyes slipped back to Picard’s office, like he had heard him say something. Then he vanished in a flash.

The rest of the week continued on as normal. If there was the occasional spat between Q and Picard, they kept it in private. Now that Q had announced his intentions with the station – to use it for a grand wedding – there was a palpable relief that soon this would all be over.

But who was the bride? Most of the station lacked the energy to speculate. They preferred to do their jobs, to survive, and leave the wild ideas to Q.

But Quark’s bar could become rowdy with bets, late at night, when the drinks were flowing. O’Brien put his money on the woman Picard had mentioned – “this Vash character,” he said. Julian got drunk and put five bars of latinum all on Picard himself. “Why else is he here?” he argued.

It was one such night when Picard was called down to the brig. He walked past the ruckus in Quark’s bar, ignoring it. One of Odo’s detainees had asked for him by name, and he had a good feeling who it was.

Sure enough, a svelte figure in an amethyst dress stretched from inside her cell, grinning at him.

Picard sighed. “I’m... very relieved you’re safe.”

Vash stood to her feet, wary of the forcefield. “You’re here, already. That’s wonderful.”

There was an awkward pause; Picard clearly wanted to say more, but they did not have the privacy. He looked to Odo, standing behind him, arms crossed and chin high.

“Well, go on,” Odo said.

“Constable. Please release her.”

“I’m sorry, Commander, but I can’t. She’s a thief.”

An argument ensued between the three of them. About what Vash had stolen, and why, and why her punishment was more important than whatever dalliance Picard was prioritizing. The argument also called into question who was the true leader of the station, Q or Picard. Odo insisted it was Q, and on that point Picard became irate.

Eventually Odo released her, grumbling that Q would hear of it.

Vash held Picard’s arm as he escorted her to her quarters. He was stiff, quiet.

“You know,” Vash said, “this might be the first time you haven’t been upset at me for doing something wrong.”

Picard nodded. “At least you admit it’s wrong.”

“I couldn’t help it. I never had any fun with Q. He was always giving me everything I wanted, most of the time before I even knew to ask. It started to feel like I was trapped in a holosuite program. It’s nice to take something now and then.” She gave Picard’s arm a tug as she said this. Then, as if remembering who she was talking to, she let go of him.

She added, “I am glad you’re here. I would have asked about you if you weren’t.”

Picard made sure there was no one else nearby. He stopped walking, turning to her. “Vash, what is this about a wedding?”

She gazed up at him with an amused sadness. “You know he’s listening. I negotiated some privacy, but all bets are off now.”

“You’re marrying Q? Is that true? To be quite honest, I’ll believe that when I see it.”

Vash reached up and brushed some invisible dust from Picard’s shoulder. “Q gets what Q wants,” she said.

On that, they were agreed. Picard led her to her quarters, and as thanks she gave him a quick peck on the cheek. The door swished shut between them.

...And on that image, the metaphorical door must now swish shut between you and I, dear reader. But only temporarily. There is more to come.

You may be wondering, by the way, how I knew any of the conversation that took place between the kidnapped captain and his lost lover. That answer, I will reveal in time.


	3. A Woodland Marriage Proposal

The next morning, Vash awoke to a curious sensation. It was the feeling of tiny, bony finger slipping between the third and fourth toe of her right foot. She was a stomach sleeper — always with one foot peeking out of the covers to stay cool, and it was no different that morning. She twitched her foot, brushing it against something like (she thought) a weed sprouting from the mattress. But how could that be possible?

She opened her eyes, whipping around — and sighed at the that sight of her room. There was a miniature forest around her. Tree roots clung to the floor, stretching upwards into slim trunks, spreading their spry branches everywhere. The forest seemed to be growing, slowly, and some of the branches already hovered a few feet above her head. She pushed the greenery aside and got dressed.

It was only trees, at first. They were youthful, teenaged, like someone had planted them last year. While she was dressing, she noticed a fern sprouting near her nightstand, and if she stood still for too long she began to feel moss forming under her feet.

She knew then it was only beginning.

A few months ago, she would have been annoyed about this intrusion. But spend a few months with Q, and anyone might develop nerves of steel in the face of such frivolity. _It's good to see you again too_ , she thought darkly of the entity.

She rang Picard's door. A tree had grown into the frame, its trunk thickening at an impossible rate. It continued up through the ceiling into the floor (or floors) above.

The door opened. Picard blinked at a branch sprouting into his face.

“Q,” Picard said, not with disgust as much as resignation. Behind him, the forest had already infiltrated his room.

“Who else?” Vash said. “Come on, he’ll keep this up until we find him.”

Picard pushed out of the doorway. A moment later and the tree trunk would have been too thick for him to manage it.

They walked to the promenade. Ferns blossomed from the ground around them. Trees shot up. A rose blossom was opening inside Vash’s shoe, and a thorn with it. She threw her shoes aside, cursing loudly.

Her clothing loosened at its seams, becoming ragged and nymph-like, and her hair fell from its ties to flounce around her shoulders.

"Oh look, a costume change," she joked dryly.

Picard’s uniform remained undisturbed.

Throughout the rest of the Promenade, the forest came to fruition. An emerging shoot tipped Dr. Bashir’s medical tools onto the floor. A thorn bush sprouted under the Dabo table. Sometimes the floor vibrated and bits of pebble and dirt popped out.

Above, an eerie pink light shone through the branches of the trees, like sunlight. It wasn’t enough to hide the stars. Those remained the strongest confirmation we had that we were still on a space station.

A long neighing sound broke through the forest. A unicorn pranced towards Picard and Vash, its hooves clapping against the floor, silent against the moss. The man riding the beast — Q, of course — sat tall and proud. His only care was to hold a stray branch from his face; otherwise he stared pointedly at Vash.

Others in the station — including myself — gathered around to watch.

Q was wearing a scarlet cape over a loose white shirt, with billowing white sleeves. A white kerchief puffed from his neck.

He tugged the unicorn to a halt. Its coat was brilliant as a star’s core.

With exaggerated sincerity, Q declared, “My love. Many long and anxious nights I've waited for you. Ah, how my heart has ached for your arrival." He flipped his cape behind his shoulders and slid from the unicorn’s back.

Vash gave a parting glance to Picard before stepping towards him. “Yes, and here I am. The station looks a little different than I expected."

"As it should, as it should. The winter of my solitude is over. The bride is here — and spring with her. Look, all the little forest children have gathered for the occasion."

Q snapped, and the dozen of peoplle who had gathered instantly wore darker, more decayed versions of what Vash was wearing. (The women were in a greater state of undress than the men, but every important area was tastefully covered by a drape of fabric or even a tucked-in sprig of greenery.)

“Yes, and you’ve brought Jean-Luc here,” Vash noted. “Is he a little forest child, or was there some other reason for that?”

Q laughed nervously, a momentary break from his character. “Obviously he’s a mutual friend.”

“Right. So then how are you handling the station? I hope it wasn’t too bothersome a transition for you?”

Q circled the unicorn dramatically, looking the very picture of a dashing prince on an adventure. “Station? What station? This is an ancient forest, home to a lovely, lonely maiden. The rumors of her beauty are second only to her actual beauty.”

With expert swagger, Q closed the distance to Vash, scooped up her hand without asking, and dropped to one knee. “Now will you make me the happiest Q in the galaxy, and do me the honor of becoming my wife?"

Vash seemed to think about this. She glanced back at Picard. Q's eyes never left her face.

"If I remember this story from my childhood — and you've done a very good imitation, Q — I think there was a ring in your hand."

"I'll give you a ring for each finger. A ring for every day. Anything for my bride. You only need say yes to my offer. Speak now while my heart is young.”

Q still held Vash’s hand, but she slipped her other hand underneath his, cupping it. She patted it and let go. “I don’t know, Q. Something still doesn’t seem right.”

"What could be more right than eternity with me?"

In response, Vash only looked at him mournfully.

Q registered this for a moment. He looked away, his tongue morphing his cheek as he thought about it. Then an inhale lifted him to his full height. He started to take off his black leather gloves, pulling a velco strap with a loud CRRRR.

"I am sorry, my dear," Vash said, with a little shrug. "I did try to get swept up in it. Maybe I just need the station all by itself. No exaggerations, or…”

Q looked doubtful. He looked at the crowd around him darkly, and a few kind souls even shirked away from his gaze. There was a thick silence in the air as Q took off his cloak and slung it over the unicorn’s back. He leaned against the animal, sullen.

Picard had attended to all of this. His expression was at first placid, inscrutable, but as Q’s mood darkened Picard became more and more weary-looking in turn. He opened his mouth to speak to Q, but as if knowing what he might say, how he might provoke Q into a darker mood still, Vash quickly spoke over him.

“Oh Jean-Luc, he did have his heart set on a wedding.”

Q scoffed. “If anyone has their heart set on a wedding, it’s you. It’s all you think about. Every place we visit, you’re drawn to the people, their relationships, their _marriages_. Really, it was the most predictable thing. I should have avoided it. What else could it possibly be like, gallivanting through the galaxy with a woman?” Q's voice had lost its grand effect, rendering him into his acrid, impudent self again. “If _I_ wanted a wedding, I could have had about a billion of them by now."

Vash went to Q, stroking his arm. “Of course you could. But you’re so thoughtful of everyone but yourself. Everyone else’s happiness before your own." She said it to Q, but also to Picard somehow. I don’t think many of the onlookers missed the irony either, and even Q seemed to grasp some aspect of it. As she stood on tiptoe to kiss him, only reaching as high as his neck, he vanished.

She stumbled forward into the unicorn, who neighed with alarm. Q appeared under a flowering tree closer to Picard, taking his second glove off.

“The truth is I do put her happiness first,” Q said. “She pines for love, craves it. Her obsession with wealth is a facade, otherwise I could easily satisfy her. But if you don't marry me, Vash, you are marrying someone before we leave this station. And if you don't love him, I will make you love him, and then it will all be settled exactly the same." He slung his gloves into a pool of water that had formed nearby. “Maybe I should _make_ you love me.”

"Honey, you know when you talk like that, you start to sound evil,” Vash said flatly.

“If I am evil for wanting to see you happy, so be it.”

Now Picard broke in. “There you have it, Q. The marriage is off. Return us to our lives.”

“Punctual as ever, Picard.”

Vash was rubbing the unicorn's neck, soothing it. "I don't think it will be that easy, Jean-Luc.”

"I fail to understand why,” Picard said. “It certainly can be that easy for Q."

Q raised his voice. “We are having a wedding. Vash is marrying someone, or we all stay here forever. I proclaim it. I proclaim it as Q." His voice resounded through the forest. The unicorn stamped its back hoof.

Picard wasn’t daunted. “This time I’d like that in writing.”

Q looked at Picard, then at Vash, but both people seemed only to infuriate him. He vanished from the room.

So much had changed. Yet Picard was the only person seemingly unaffected. He still wore his uniform. He looked wholly out of place among the forest, the station residents in token costume, and Vash petting the unicorn.

Eagle-eyed readers will note this is the second time Q — who seemed to delight in fashion and missed no opportunity to demonstrate his vast knowledge of the subject — had completely ignored Picard’s participation in the matter. (The first was in our last chapter, when Picard had abandoned his uniform after arriving on the station in order to gain Q’s attention. Q had ignored Picard’s civilian garb, speaking to him as a Starfleet officer.)

But if any of us noticed Q absenting Picard, how could we guess it meant anything?

The forest grew taller over the next week, although the pace of its growth had slowed. When the trees reached the ceiling of the Promenade, they poked through and grew into the vacuum of space. When this happened, some of us were rightfully concerned about the structural integrity of the station. Dr. Bashir climbed a tree to try to analyze what was going on, and came down baffled about what his tricorder had showed him.

“Whatever’s happening on the molecular level, it’s beyond me,” he said.

“Q’s madness,” O’Brien said.

“But the effect is beautiful, isn’t it?” Picard said. “A terrarium in space, breaking out of itself. As if the station is evolving. Not many life forms ever see such things.”

O’Brien nodded begrudgingly. “My wife can’t enough of it. She keeps talking about how fast it’s growing. I told her if it’s Q, I’m determined to hate it.”

Picard eyed O’Brien, hearing his words. He didn’t reply.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love comments! They really help me write faster. Let me know if you like this! :)
> 
> The next chapter is coming SOON. I had to break this one into two. It was too long.


End file.
